The most anticipated Louisville men\u2019s basketball season in some time got off on a sour note Friday night, with the Cardinals falling to visiting Kansas, 90-82, in exhibition play.<\/p>\n
The Jayhawks scored the game\u2019s first nine points, and outside of a few minutes in the middle of the first half, the visitors pretty much controlled the action from start to finish.<\/p>\n
The story of the evening was KU freshman phenom Darryn Peterson. The potential No. 1 pick in next year\u2019s NBA Draft somehow looked even better than advertised, scoring 26 points on 9-of-15 shooting, knocking down six three-pointers, and recording five steals.<\/p>\n
As was often the case early on a season ago, Louisville struggled with turnovers and outside shooting. The Cardinals gave the ball away 20 times, and connected on just 11 of their 38 three-point attempts, good for 28.9 percent. U of L shot only 33.3 percent from the field overall.<\/p>\n
Pat Kelsey\u2019s team was paced by senior guard Ryan Conwell, who matched Peterson for the game-high in scoring with 26 points. J\u2019Vonne Hadley nearly recorded a double-double, finishing with 13 points and nine rebounds.<\/p>\n
While it was a spectacular debut for Peterson, Louisville\u2019s own freshman phenom had a night he\u2019d rather forget. Point guard Mikel Brown Jr. hit just two of his 15 field goal attempts and also finished the evening with only two assists.<\/p>\n
Louisville once again looked less athletic and less physical around the rim, particularly on the defensive end. Interior defense and rebounding were major concerns toward the end of last season, and Friday night\u2019s performance did little to alleviate the fears that they may be concerns again this winter. The Cards are going to need more from German import Sananda Fru, or they\u2019re going to need Kasean Pryor to contribute more at the 5 (once he\u2019s back) than anyone was anticipating when this roster was pieced together.<\/p>\n
I think tonight will be good for Mikel Brown. He\u2019s a capable outside shooter who is now running a system that emphasizes the outside shot, but a semi-challenged three shouldn\u2019t be option A for him when he has the ball in his hands. Hopefully the humbling he received in his first Yum Center performance will help hammer that home.<\/p>\n
Darryn Peterson is outrageously good.<\/p>\n
This wasn\u2019t the debut anyone was hoping to see, but it shouldn\u2019t be cause for major alarm either. If reacted to appropriately, this will wind up being a positive for a team with a host of talented pieces still figuring out how to put everything together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The most anticipated Louisville men\u2019s basketball season in some time got off on a sour note Friday night,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":331327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1339,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-331326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115434329753116906","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}